Roger Pearson (anthropologist)

Roger Pearson (born August 21, 1927[1]) is a British anthropologist, soldier, businessman, eugenics advocate, political organiser for the extreme right, and publisher of political and academic journals. He has been on the faculty of the Queens College, Charlotte and University of Southern Mississippi, and Montana Tech, and is now retired. It has been noted that Pearson has been surprisingly successful in combining a career in academics with political activities on the far right.[2] He served in the British Army after World War 2, and was a businessman in South Asia. In the late 1950s he founded the Northern League. In the 1960s he established himself in the United States for a while working together with Willis Carto publishing white supremacist and anti-Semitic literature.[3]

Pearson's anthropological work is based in an evolutionary and racialist approach, of the kind that was common in anthropology in the early 20th century, based on the idea that the progress of humankind depends on making sure that "favorable" genes are segregated out from amongst "unfavorable" genetic formulae".[4] He has consistently advocated that the human species consists of biologically distinct races which he defines as "rival breeding populations",[4] some of which are intrinsically better fit than others, and which competes against each other in a struggle for survival, but which all too frequently intermingle to the detriment of the superior races.[5] He argues that the future of the human species depends on political and scientific steps to replace the "genetic formulae" and populations that he consider to be inferior with better ones, through "humane and benevolent eugenics policies".[6][7][8][9]

Pearson also published two popular textbooks in anthropology, but his anthropological views on the race question have been widely rejected as unsupported by contemporary anthropology. Consequently Pearson faced difficulties in publishing his work. For this reason he founded several journals dedicated to publicising research that was otherwise excluded from mainstream journals: Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies as well as Journal of Indo-European Studies, which would become the most influential journal of Indo-European linguistics. In 1978 he took over the editorship of the journal Mankind Quarterly founded by Robert Gayre and Henry Garrett, widely considered a right wing journal. Most of Pearson's publishing ventures have been managed through the Institute for the Study of Man, and the Pioneer Fund, with which Pearson is closely associated, having received $568,000 in the period form 1981-1991.[10][11][12]

Pearson's strict stance against racial and political egalitarianism also manifested in a consistent opposition to Marxism and socialism. In the 1980s he was a political organiser for the American far-right, he established the Council for American Affairs, the American representative in the World Anti-Communist League. Pearson was World Chairman of the WACL, and in that capacity collaborated closely with the US government during the cold war, and he collaborated with international many anti-communist groups in the organisation, including followers of Reverend Moon and former German Nazis.[13][14] On his website Pearson rebuts some of the claims in the literature about him, rejecting specific accusations of race-hate, of anti-semitism, of arguing in favor of genocide, involuntary eugenics, forced repatriation of legal immigrants, subjugation or exploitation by one group of another, extreme or fascist politics including National Socialism or any totalitarian system, as well as denying accusations of impropriety.[15]

From the University of London, he gained a Master's degree in Economics and Sociology and a PhD in Anthropology.[16] Pearson grew up in England during World War II and his only sibling, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot (238 Squadron), four cousins (three pilots/aircrew) and two school friends, died in that war. Later, Pearson would frequently describe World War 2 as a senseless "fratricidal war", in which the mutual destruction of Germanic peoples contributed to the gradual downfall of the Nordic race.[17]

In 1958 he founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, an organisation promoting Pan-Germanism, Anti-semitism and Neo Nazi racial ideology.[18][19][20] The Northern League published the journals "The Northlander" and "Northern World" which described is purpose as "to make Whites aware of their forgotten racial heritage, and cut through the Judaic fog of lies about our origin and the accomplishments of our race and our Western culture."[21] In 1959 in the Northlander, Pearson described the aim of the organization as preventing the "annihilation of our kind" and to lead Nordics in Europe and the Americas in the "fight for survival against forces which would mongrelize our race and civilization"[22] He also wrote of the need for "a totalitarian state, with conscious purpose and central control . . . to embark upon a thorough-going policy of genetic change for its population. . . . [T]here is surely little doubt that it could soon outstrip rival nations."[23] Under the pen name Edward Langford,[1] Pearson also wrote a series on "Authors of Human Science" with portraits of prominent racialists such as Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,[24]Arthur Keith,[25]Madison Grant[26] and Lothrop Stoddard.[27]

Pearson also corresponded with segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox, a dedicated member of the League, who had lobbyed for a federal funding to "Repatriate" African-Americans to Africa since the 1920s. Pearson assured him that "I am entirely with you on your efforts to obtain Federal aid to American Negroes who wish to return to Africa."[23]

From the beginning the League was criticised because of its open emphasis on the dysgenic and fratricidal nature of intra-European warfare, and its tendency to attract prominent ex-Nazis such as scholar Hans F. K. Günther, who received awards under the National Socialist regime for his work on race, and Heinrich Himmler's former assistant Franz Altheim, both of whom were members of the league in its early years. Other members of the league were British Neo-Nazi Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall.[28] Pearson resigned from the League in 1961, after which it became more politically oriented.[18]

It was Cox who suggested to Pearson that they should hold a meeting at Detmold, West Germany, near what was then believed to be the site where the Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The first meeting of the League was indeed held there in 1959, with Cox and Hans F. K. Günther as keynote speakers, although Günther's participation, him being a prominent former Nazi, had to be kept low profile.[23] The event was described by locals as "National Socialism revived"[29]

On his website, Pearson states that the Northern League never advocated National Socialism or political totalitarianism, and that membership was open to anyone who wished to receive the league's publications.[15]

Pearson's anthropological views drew on the theories of British anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, who had argued that human races were distinct evolutionary units destined to compete for resources. Pearson's early writings directly cited Keith as a major influence even while recognizing that "many will see [Keith’s observations] as a defence of Hitlerite philosophy.”[30] Pearson summarizes Keith's racial and evolutionary philosophy in the following manner: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialised, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide, and destroys the work of thousands of years of biological isolation and natural selection."[31]

In his work Pearson describes racial types as subspecies, which he defines as "a distinctive group of individuals which are on their way to becoming separate species, but which have not been isolated long enough, or had time to become sufficiently diversified to lose the power to inter-breed". He argues that mixing between subspecies is detrimental as one subspecies will always be better suited for life than the other, and will therefore tend to avoid miscegenation.[22][32][33][34][35]

In 1995 and 1996 Pearson published a trilogy of articles in Mankind Quarterly regarding the "Concept of heredity in Western thought", a defense of hereditarianism and an denouncement of the "onslaught of egalitarianism". Pearson here repeated his defense for the iew of racial groups as subspecies and he repeated his dedication to eugenicist ideas, although with the caveat that negative eugenics ought to take place as a voluntary act of altruistic sacrifice for one's species.[36] The same views were repeated in the 1996 book "Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science".[37]

Pearson served as president of the Pakistan Tea Association, Chittagong, in 1963.[38] He also served on the managing committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.[39] Pearson sold his business interests in East Pakistan in 1965 and moved to the United States. It was during his time in South Asia that he became interested in Aryanism, and the linguistic, cultural, and genetic connections between Northern Europe and the Indo-Aryan populations of the Subcontinent.[40]

Recently arrived in the United States, he contributed to some of publications of anti-semite Willis Carto such as Western Destiny and to Noontide Press.[41] From 1966 to 1967 as "Stephan Langton", Pearson published The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question."[42] As Lanton he published articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power" and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."[43] His books of this era, all published in 1966 in London by Clair Press, including Eugenics and Race, Blood groups and Race, Race & Civilisation and Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples were later distributed in the United States by The Thunderbolt Inc.,[44] an organ of the National States' Rights Party. Pearson's co-founder of The New Patriot was Senator Jack Tenney, who for sixteen years was Chairman of the California Senate Committee on Un-American Activities and who wrote frequently for that journal.[citation needed] Pearson joined the Eugenics Society in 1963 and became a fellow in 1977.

In 1966 he toured the southern US and Caribbean, and in 1967 he visited South Africa, Rhodesia and Mozambique, before joining the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in 1968 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology. In 1970, he was appointed Associate Professor and head of Sociology and Anthropology at Queens College, Charlotte (now Queens University of Charlotte) but resigned to return to USM the next year as Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology, offering both Bachelors and Masters degrees. According to William Tucker's description, as chair of Anthropology of the University of Southern Mississippi fired most of the non-tenured faculty, hiring instead scholars such as Robert E. Kuttner and Donald A. Swan both with similar political backgrounds to Pearson. The dean at USM later stated that Pearson had "used his post as an academic façade to bring in equal-minded fanatics."[47] Pearson himself states that this is untrue and that "It is true that two faculty members from the formerly separate Religion department, which had recently been merged with Pearson’s department to create a larger, combined department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Religion, were terminated, but this act was ordered by the Administration and not by the department Chair, Pearson."[15]

In 1974 Pearson was appointed Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech.[48] During his tenure as dean, the school received $60,000 from the Pioneer Fund to support Pearson's academic research and publishing activities.[48] When a journalist called the various universities at which Pearson had held positions, Montana Tech officials stated they were unaware that Pearson was the person who had edited Western Destiny, a periodical laden with many pro-South Africa, anti-Communist and anti-racial mixing articles, who had penned both articles and pamphlets for Willis Carto's Noontide Press.[48] These race-oriented titles included: "Eugenics and Race" and "Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples."[48]

Pearson's work in publishing the work of "scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, and a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense" was commended by President Ronald Reagan for his ""substantial contribution to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad."[18][49]

Pearson was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978. According to William H. Tucker he "used this opportunity to fill the WACL with European Nazis – ex-officials of the Third Reich and Nazi collaborators from other countries during the war as well as new adherents to the cause—in what one journalist called "one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe."[50]

He presided over its 11th Annual Conference held in Washington that year. The initial session of the five-day session, which was addressed by two U.S Senators and opened by the Marine Corp Band and Joint Armed Services Honor Guard, was attended by several hundred members from around the world. After the meeting had been condemned in Pravda, the Washington Post published an even more critical attack on both WACL and Pearson's extreme right wing politics.[51][52]

Pearson resigned from the WACL in the wake of accusations that he "encouraged the membership of European and Latin American groups with Nazi or neo-Nazi ties".[53] In a Wall Street Journal article subsequent chairmanJohn Singlaub was quoted calling Pearson "an "embarrassment" who is "not at all welcome in any activity"[53] The same article claimed that Pearson's Presidential commendation had been achieved only through the mediation of an associate of Pearson's who worked in the Defence Department. The White House did not retract the letter, but made a public statement in which the Presidential secretary affirmed the Presidents' repudiation of any sort of racial discrimination. Pearson was requested to stop using the letter from Reagan in public promotion of his activities.[53] One member of the WACL, conservative politician Geoffrey Stewart-Smith described the organization during its period under Pearson as "largely a collection of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers."[54]

After the Washington Post article, Pearson was asked to resign from the editorial board of the neo-Conservative Heritage Foundation's journal Policy Review, which he had helped to found, but his connection with other organisations continued, and in 1986 CovertAction Quarterly uncovered his association with James Angleton, former chief of CIA Counter-Intelligence, General Daniel O. Graham, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Robert C. Richardson, and other American Security Council members.[55]

In 1981, Pearson received the library of Donald A. Swan through a grant from the Pioneer Fund.[56] Between 1973 and 1999 the Fund spent $1.2 million on Pearson's activities, most of which was used for the Institute for the Study of Man[57] which Pearson directed and which under Pearson acquired the peer-reviewed journal Mankind Quarterly in 1979. Pearson took over as publisher and is said to have editorial influence, although his name has never appeared on the masthead. Pearson has used diverse pseudonyms to contribute to the journal, including J.W. Jamieson, and Alan McGregor, sometimes even using one pseudonym to review and praise the work of another.[58] This publication was later taken over by The Council for Social and Economic Studies.

^"Pearson has succeeded in combining such right-wing politics with a conventional academic career." – Kühl, Stefan (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press, p. 4.

^Winston, A. S. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5(2), 231-250.

^ ab"Evolution cannot occur unless 'favorable' genes are segregated out from amongst 'unfavorable" genetic formulae' [...] any population that adopts a perverted or dysgenic form of altruism – one which encourages a breeding community to breed disproportionately those of its members who are genetically handicapped rather than from those who are genetically favored, or which aids rival breeding populations to expand while restricting its own birthrate – is unlikely to survive into the definite future." – Pearson, Roger (1995b). "The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Three, the Revival of Interest in Genetics,"The Mankind Quarterly, 36, pp. 96, 98."

^ abA. S. Winston. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5, 231—250. "Pearson was clear about the problem of contact between races: ". . . evolutionary progress can only take place properly amongst small non-cross-breeding groups. Always, a cross between two types meant the annihilation of the better type, for although the lower sub-species would be improved by such a cross, the more advanced would be retarded, and would then have a weaker chance in the harsh and entirely amoral competition for survival." (1959a, pp. 9-10)[2]

^Anderson, Scott, & Anderson, Jon Lee (1986). Inside the League: the Shocking Exposé of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have infiltrated the world Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd, Mead, p. 94.

^Pearson "Eugenics and Race" "There is no way of eliminating undesirable genetic qualities except by annihilating the 'line,' that is by preventing the individual who carries the unfortunate genes from reproducing at all. If one does not wish to go so far as that then one must at least prevent cross-breeding between 'healthy and unhealthy stock, for once the entire stock is contaminated there is no solution other than the annihilation of the entire species." p. 27

^Pearson, 1966 [1959] "Eugenics and Race" pp. 40-41 "To think and practice eugenic and racial morals ourself is our duty, but this is not enough in the troubled state of the world today. It is necessary for each and every one of us to work to bring these ideas home to our fellow beings. We must talk and write about eugenics and race; we must help to make the ideas "fashionable" as quickly as we can. Let there be no confusion, also, between the two concepts for basically they are one and the same. A race is a group of individuals who possess a similar genetic heritage, and who when crossed are capable of breeding true. A race is consequently pure or impure according to its ability to breed true, and to produce its own kind. Biological accidents do occur, and these may result in the defects which eugenics seeks to remove from the mainstream (not necessarily by inhumane means), but differences in emotive, intellectual and physical constitution, where not acquired, are largely racial, the product of the importation of a different pattern of genes. ... We can only prevent the destruction of this edifice if we take it upon ourselves to overcome our· inherent shyness of such topics, to forget that we might possibly say something that might offend our neighbours, and start talking about race, racial hygiene and human eugenics. Only thus can we ensure that our children and-their children-will be able to find fitting partners for marriage. Only thus can we ensure the survival of our own kind and our own species and also lay the foundations for a noble future. Human stock-breeding is surely not a bad thing when exercised voluntarily and intelligently, and when its aim is to preserve an aristocracy of mankind."

^Pearson, R. (1995). The concept of heredity in Western thought. III: The revival of interest in genetics. Mankind quarterly, 36(1), 73-103. "Once science can determine which individuals and populations have disproportionately high gene frequencies for advantageous traits, and which are handicapped by deleterious genetic qualities, societies which are prompted by a higher altruism dedicated to the wellbeing of future generations, rather to the sole gratification of the selfish needs of those who are currently living, will be able to effectively select eugenic over dysgenic reproduction. If true altruism prevails, the result will be eugenic decisions, made voluntarily and without coercion." "Any species that adopts patterns of behavior that run counter to the forces that govern the universe is doomed to suffer a painful, harshly enforced and totally involuntary eugenic process of evolutionary reselection and readaptation - or an even more severe penalty, extinction."

^Schaffer, Gavin "‘Scientific’ Racism Again?”:1 Reginald Gates, the Mankind Quarterly and the Question of “Race” in Science after the Second World War Journal of American Studies (2007), 41: 253-278 Cambridge University Press